Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency has infiltrated Iran’s leadership, and many senior officials in the Islamic Republic are compromised, a former Iranian intelligence minister said on Tuesday.
“The leaders of the country don’t show any interest in what’s best for the public and their lives, and the Mossad has succeeded, with enticements of influence and money, to penetrate the regime’s security bodies,” Ali Younesi said in an interview with the reformist Jamaran news website.
“Spy agencies can easily penetrate radical groups and organizations, because in these groups only radicalism matters,” Younesi continued. “Spy agencies pick the right radicals from among their own ranks or elsewhere and have them infiltrate other intelligence agencies. The more radical they are, the quicker they get promoted and reach the top echelon of the intelligence agencies.”
Younesi’s criticism echoed recent remarks by former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who claimed some two weeks ago that Israeli agents had infiltrated his country’s counterintelligence services, particularly the department tasked with foiling Israeli espionage.
Ahmadinejad even alleged that officials within Iran’s intelligence agencies sought to cover the tracks of the assassins of Iranian nuclear scientists, including the head of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
The former Iranian president, who had recently been disqualified from running for re-election in Iran’s presidential election, which resulted in victory for hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, alleged that “a massive Israeli operation used a corrupt gang of security personnel in the upper echelons of the national intelligence apparatus.”
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.